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It’s a frigid Sunday morning in mid-February and while most Torontonians are probably still huddled up in bed, oblivious to the snowflakes sporadically falling outside, a handful of people clad in full-body wetsuits are standing on the shore of Ashbridge’s Bay with surfboards in hand.

The biting wind that’s been ripping through the city for the past few hours has churning Lake Ontario into a brownish-green, whitecapped frenzy; apparently unfazed by the fact that it’s -4 C or the storm blowing on around her, Shazia McCormick wades waist-deep into the water and paddles out to catch a wave.

“It seems a little different, doesn’t it?” the 42-year-old bank director said in an interview with a laugh.

“Once you get over the fear of it, it’s very exhilarating.”

Once a relatively unheard of activity, surfing on the Great Lakes has jumped in popularity over the past five years, attracting everyone from experienced surfers who learned in warmer waters to newbies who’ve never touched a surfboard before.

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“I think surfing has sort of exploded all over the world,” long-time surfer and instructor Antonio Lennert said. Lennert, who grew up surfing in Brazil, is the founder of Surf the Greats, one of a handful of surf shops around the GTA that sell gear specifically for lake surfing, offer classes on surfing and wave forecasting and also organize meetups and competitions.

“More and more people are trying to get outside ... They want to connect with the environment and of course they want to have a photo taken to show their friends what they’re doing,” Lennert said. “ Surfing on the Great Lakes, especially during the winter months, it’s so harsh and it’s so visually striking … it definitely has an appeal to those people who want to experience something that’s that challenging and that different.”

It’s not just bragging rights drawing people to Lake Ontario in the winter, though. Unlike oceans, where there’s a tide, lake surfers are dependant on the wind blowing fast and long enough across the lake to produce waves. Winter storms generate the strongest winds and therefore the biggest waves. They also come in closer together than ocean waves — every three seconds rather than every 15 seconds.

Stand up paddleboard surfer Jordan-na Belle-Isle walks along the shore at Ashbridge's Bay in February. Belle-Isle is part of the Lake Surfistas community, a group for female surfers, and the 2016-2017 season was her first full winter surfing on the lakes.

Tracking wind forecasts is an art in and of itself.

Other challenges unique to lake surfing include freshwater having less buoyancy than saltwater, meaning surfboards need to be wider to stay afloat; dodging rebar and other debris along the shore on popular surf spots including Ashbridge’s Bay, Bluffer’s Park and other shorelines around Oshawa, Oakville and Hamilton; and, even though more people are participating, surfing still hasn’t really hit the mainstream, meaning there’s no real infrastructure such as change rooms in place, leaving surfers to change in their cars or at home.

The cold, believe it or not, actually isn’t that big of a deal, according to surfers who talked to the Star — a good wetsuit, paired with rubber mittens and booties, allows surfers to stay in freezing water for hours without catching hypothermia or frostbite.

“The outside temperature’s insanely cold, but once we’re in the water, we’re OK,” said Larry Cavero, the founder of Surf Dreams Canada, another local surf shop. “We feel like firefighters in a fire, we have the proper gear, so we’re warm. Our faces are always cold because that’s the only part of our bodies that are exposed, but other than that, we’re warm.”

Cavero is somewhat of a legend amongst GTA surfers, who many credit for helping to spur the growth and accessibility of the sport through organizing events including beach clean ups at Scarborough’s Bluffer’s Park, a surfing hot spot.

Originally from Lima, Peru, Cavero grew up in a family of surfers; over the years, he said he kept hearing rumours that big waves — oceanlike waves, even — could be found on Lake Ontario, but could never quite catch them — that is, until the fall of 2009, when he wandered down to Bluffer’s Park.

“I was coming down the hill and I saw whitewash,” Cavero recalled, his voice still giddy with excitement.

“I came down and seriously, I looked up and I just couldn’t believe, what I saw was unreal — good-sized waves, nice shape — my God, I just screamed, screamed like crazy, like a little kid that finally got his pass to go to Disneyland, it was unreal,” he said. “I think I surfed so much that day I couldn’t even move the day after. It was an unreal experience.”

He’s been a devotee to the lakes since, surfing at least three times a week in the winter and promoting surfing — answering questions online, posting weather updates, taking beginners out — during the rest.

Surfer Shazia McCormick enters the water at Ashbridge's Bay during a snowfall in February. Her board was hand-made by another local surfer specifically for use on the lakes.

Another legend of the Lakes is Gavin Fregona, 66, a community veteran. He began windsurfing on the Great Lakes in the ’90s after moving from South Africa, and discovered about 12 years ago that he could surf without the sail, too. Now retired, he hits the water — Lake Ontario, Lake Huron, Lake Erie — “any time there’s waves.”

“I’m probably one of the oldest guys that surfs in the lake around here and it’s good fun because you see how you can do against these 30 year olds,” Fregona said. “I do pretty good.”

Fregona’s other claim to fame is the weather station and live-cam feed he runs from his home on Port Union Rd., providing live updates on the weather and lake conditions in Scarborough as well as data on other spots aggregated from across the internet. For a sport completely dependant on weather conditions in a specific spot, his website has become an invaluable resource.

But even with two decades of experience Fregona is one of few to admit he prefers the ocean and just surfs on the lake because he has no other choice.

“I grew up in South Africa on the ocean, where it was always warm and nice and you start surfing when you’re 7 or 8 years old,” Fregona said. “But I could never figure out how some people here, maybe in their 20s or 30s, will decide it’s a great idea to suddenly surf a bloody lake that’s -10 C ... You’d figure they’d go skiing or something like that.”

For Toronto native McCormick, surfing on Lake Ontario has been revelation of sorts.

“It’s really been life-changing for me and I know that sounds somewhat dramatic, but for me, I’ve lived near the lake for quite some time and never realized it was something I could utilize year-round,” she said.

“I think it’s also raised a ton of awareness around water conservation and pollution and things like that, so aside from the sport we love doing, for me, it’s also become an appreciation of where we live.”

McCormick helped create the Lake Surfistas group in 2015, a collective of more than 200 female surfers who share resources with each other and encourage and support women trying to get into the sport. She’s also a member of the Toronto Surf Club, a Facebook group that boasts more than 2,000 members swapping locations, asking about the weather and teaming up to hit the waves.

Cavero, for his part, isencouraged by the steadily increasing number of people taking to the lakes and envisions a bright future for surfing in the GTA — one where it’s as conventional a Canadian winter activity as ice skating or playing hockey on frozen ponds.

“You don’t need to go to Hawaii, California or Florida or anywhere else to learn or even to come back into surfing,” Cavero said. “We have something pretty special here in the Great Lakes.”

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